Penguin Story: A Visual Exploration
Ehsna Zangene
Meet the Penguins
The Palmer Penguins dataset contains size measurements, clutch observations, and blood isotope ratios for three penguin species: Adelie, Chinstrap, and Gentoo, observed on three islands in the Palmer Archipelago, Antarctica (2007–2009).
This project explores their story through tidy data and reproducible R code.
penguins_raw <- read_csv("https://raw.githubusercontent.com/esnzgn/DataViz-R-Course/main/data/penguins_raw.csv") |> clean_names()## Rows: 344 Columns: 17
## ── Column specification ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
## Delimiter: ","
## chr (10): study_name, species, region, island, stage, individual_id, clutch_...
## dbl (7): sample_number, culmen_length_mm, culmen_depth_mm, flipper_length_m...
##
## ℹ Use `spec()` to retrieve the full column specification for this data.
## ℹ Specify the column types or set `show_col_types = FALSE` to quiet this message.head(penguins_raw)## # A tibble: 6 × 17
## study_name sample_number species region island stage individual_id
## <chr> <dbl> <chr> <chr> <chr> <chr> <chr>
## 1 PAL0708 1 Adelie Penguin (Py… Anvers Torge… Adul… N1A1
## 2 PAL0708 2 Adelie Penguin (Py… Anvers Torge… Adul… N1A2
## 3 PAL0708 3 Adelie Penguin (Py… Anvers Torge… Adul… N2A1
## 4 PAL0708 4 Adelie Penguin (Py… Anvers Torge… Adul… N2A2
## 5 PAL0708 5 Adelie Penguin (Py… Anvers Torge… Adul… N3A1
## 6 PAL0708 6 Adelie Penguin (Py… Anvers Torge… Adul… N3A2
## # ℹ 10 more variables: clutch_completion <chr>, date_egg <chr>,
## # culmen_length_mm <dbl>, culmen_depth_mm <dbl>, flipper_length_mm <dbl>,
## # body_mass_g <dbl>, sex <chr>, delta_15_n_o_oo <dbl>, delta_13_c_o_oo <dbl>,
## # comments <chr>
“Penguin Body”
“Penguins Species”
Cleaning the Data
penguins <- penguins_raw |>
filter(!is.na(species)) |>
mutate(sex = factor(sex), species = factor(species), island = factor(island))
penguins## # A tibble: 344 × 17
## study_name sample_number species region island stage individual_id
## <chr> <dbl> <fct> <chr> <fct> <chr> <chr>
## 1 PAL0708 1 Adelie Penguin (P… Anvers Torge… Adul… N1A1
## 2 PAL0708 2 Adelie Penguin (P… Anvers Torge… Adul… N1A2
## 3 PAL0708 3 Adelie Penguin (P… Anvers Torge… Adul… N2A1
## 4 PAL0708 4 Adelie Penguin (P… Anvers Torge… Adul… N2A2
## 5 PAL0708 5 Adelie Penguin (P… Anvers Torge… Adul… N3A1
## 6 PAL0708 6 Adelie Penguin (P… Anvers Torge… Adul… N3A2
## 7 PAL0708 7 Adelie Penguin (P… Anvers Torge… Adul… N4A1
## 8 PAL0708 8 Adelie Penguin (P… Anvers Torge… Adul… N4A2
## 9 PAL0708 9 Adelie Penguin (P… Anvers Torge… Adul… N5A1
## 10 PAL0708 10 Adelie Penguin (P… Anvers Torge… Adul… N5A2
## # ℹ 334 more rows
## # ℹ 10 more variables: clutch_completion <chr>, date_egg <chr>,
## # culmen_length_mm <dbl>, culmen_depth_mm <dbl>, flipper_length_mm <dbl>,
## # body_mass_g <dbl>, sex <fct>, delta_15_n_o_oo <dbl>, delta_13_c_o_oo <dbl>,
## # comments <chr>Summary Statistics
summary(penguins)## study_name sample_number
## Length:344 Min. : 1.00
## Class :character 1st Qu.: 29.00
## Mode :character Median : 58.00
## Mean : 63.15
## 3rd Qu.: 95.25
## Max. :152.00
##
## species region
## Adelie Penguin (Pygoscelis adeliae) :152 Length:344
## Chinstrap penguin (Pygoscelis antarctica): 68 Class :character
## Gentoo penguin (Pygoscelis papua) :124 Mode :character
##
##
##
##
## island stage individual_id clutch_completion
## Biscoe :168 Length:344 Length:344 Length:344
## Dream :124 Class :character Class :character Class :character
## Torgersen: 52 Mode :character Mode :character Mode :character
##
##
##
##
## date_egg culmen_length_mm culmen_depth_mm flipper_length_mm
## Length:344 Min. :32.10 Min. :13.10 Min. :172.0
## Class :character 1st Qu.:39.23 1st Qu.:15.60 1st Qu.:190.0
## Mode :character Median :44.45 Median :17.30 Median :197.0
## Mean :43.92 Mean :17.15 Mean :200.9
## 3rd Qu.:48.50 3rd Qu.:18.70 3rd Qu.:213.0
## Max. :59.60 Max. :21.50 Max. :231.0
## NA's :2 NA's :2 NA's :2
## body_mass_g sex delta_15_n_o_oo delta_13_c_o_oo
## Min. :2700 FEMALE:165 Min. : 7.632 Min. :-27.02
## 1st Qu.:3550 MALE :168 1st Qu.: 8.300 1st Qu.:-26.32
## Median :4050 NA's : 11 Median : 8.652 Median :-25.83
## Mean :4202 Mean : 8.733 Mean :-25.69
## 3rd Qu.:4750 3rd Qu.: 9.172 3rd Qu.:-25.06
## Max. :6300 Max. :10.025 Max. :-23.79
## NA's :2 NA's :14 NA's :13
## comments
## Length:344
## Class :character
## Mode :character
##
##
##
## Penguin Population by Species and Island
penguins |>
count(species, island) |>
ggplot(aes(x = island, y = n, fill = species)) +
geom_col(position = "dodge") +
labs(title = "Penguin Count by Species and Island", x = "Island", y = "Count")
Bill Length vs Depth
ggplot(penguins, aes(x = culmen_length_mm, y = culmen_depth_mm, color = species, shape = sex)) +
geom_point(alpha = 0.7) +
labs(title = "Bill Length vs Depth", x = "Bill Length (mm)", y = "Bill Depth (mm)")## Warning: Removed 11 rows containing missing values or values outside the scale range
## (`geom_point()`).
Flipper Length and Body Mass by Species
penguins |>
pivot_longer(c(flipper_length_mm, body_mass_g), names_to = "trait", values_to = "value") |>
ggplot(aes(x = species, y = value, fill = species)) +
geom_boxplot() +
facet_wrap(~trait, scales = "free_y") +
labs(title = "Flipper Length and Body Mass by Species")## Warning: Removed 4 rows containing non-finite outside the scale range
## (`stat_boxplot()`).
Sex Distribution
penguins |>
count(sex, species) |>
ggplot(aes(x = species, y = n, fill = sex)) +
geom_col(position = "dodge") +
labs(title = "Sex Distribution by Species", y = "Count")
Conclusion
The Palmer Penguins offer a beautiful story of biodiversity, adaptation, and scientific discovery. Using R, we visualize and explore how size, sex, species, and geography shape this Antarctic tale.
Data from Gorman et al. (2014) via palmerpenguins R package.